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Early last year I had three things on my mind. I was researching the possible use of Amazon AWS for a project we were working on; I was watching the events at the Auckland Startup Weekend wishing I was there; and finally I was preparing for a presentation I was due to give at the College of Business at Massey University. It was a holiday weekend, so much to Sonya's dismay, I wondered if I could run my own Start Weekend. The question I asked myself was "Could I launch an internet business in one weekend, in the process write all the code, learn AWS including EC2, Route53, Multi Region ELB, RDS, SSL, Cloud Watch and Autoscaling and could I prove to the University Students they had wonderful opportunities available as it was possible to launch an incredibly scalable business for a meer $60 a month?"

First of all Amazon AWS is incredible, if you're going to build an online business do it there and make sure your start by building to scale. Anyway I worked like a dog, and I came close, but by the end of the 3rd day I was exhausted; I had a working website, but something that was still a little buggy, and without enough design refinement for me to want to put my name to it. It was however an awesome test and if I had, had a project partner it would have been easily achieved. I loved this project, and as I am so passionate about helping people design their financial or business futures I didn't want the work to be just thrown out. I put it on the virtual shelf where it stayed until last week when I had a few evenings free to finally finish and release the project. So on the 12/12/12 I released The "Possibility Calculator" as both a Website and Facebook app. Slowly over the week people have been trying it out and having fun not just understanding their current financial situation but also playing "what if?" as they create alternative scenarios too.

Anyway, I'm writing tonight to mark the occasion. A few days out from Christmas is probably the worst time to release this as everyone is so busy, but I had set a goal of doing so in 2012. If you're game, then please have a play. If you have friends that need budgeting assistance please share this with them. We are in difficult times and most of us could either do with more money, better understand where it all goes and almost everyone wants to pay down their debt. If any of that rings true for you then The Possibility Calculator might be just what you need. Enjoy!http://www.thepossibilitycalculator.com